In the late 1990’s, Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling promotion was on top of the world. Business skyrocketed to epic proportions based largely on the success of the original new World order storyline, and in 2000, WCW sought to capitalize on their newfound mainstream acceptance by producing a comedic film based on their own company.
TODAY’S ISSUE: WCW Presents Ready to Rumble, the Movie and More!
For the life of me, I can’t fathom the logic behind this film. WCW practically depicted its own fan base, whose hard-earned money allowed the company to exist in the first place, as a bunch of semi-retarded, rude, immature, stupid, inbred hillbillies who cry when their favorite wrestler loses a title match and take glee at jamming their fingers up their own asses. I’m sure many of the more intelligent wrestling fans in the world, like my colleagues here at InsidePulse.com, were just thrilled with the way wrestling fans were depicted by one of the most successful wrestling promotions ever.
Basically the plot is that two moronic sewage workers (David Arquette and Scott Caan) are heartbroken when their favorite wrestler, WCW World Heavyweight Champion Jimmy King (Oliver Platt), is “screwed” out of the title by evil promoter Titus Sinclair (Joe Pantoliano) and mega-heel Diamond Dallas Page. The two shit-suckers selflessly leave behind their fruitful lives of hanging around the local 7 Eleven, coercing the sales clerk to give them free Slurpee refills in a manner most foul, to seek out Jimmy King and help him regain the eye of the tiger, whether he wants their help or not. Because, you know, wrestling’s REAL and all. I’ll just bet you can guess what happened at the end.
In a new match type created specifically for the film, three cages are stacked atop each other. To win the match one man must ascend to the top of the highest cage and physically capture the title belt. The structure was impressive looking, but tailor made for a movie about pro wrestling, not for an actual wrestling promotion to try in front of a paying audience. Keep that in mind.
OK, WCW made their stupid film. I was even looking forward to watching the movie when I learned all the in-ring action was choreographed by “Who Betta Than” Kanyon, a fantastic performer. But not even the Innovator of Offense could salvage this pile of disease-infested monkey crap. The movie was on par with WWE Films’ latest venture, See No Evil. Alternate Reality fans know how much I enjoyed THAT monstrosity. Still, at least when the end credits rolled the horrifying experience was over, right? Wrong. Dead wrong.
Just as the WWF stupidly brought Tiny Tom Lister’s “Zeus” character off the silver screen after their 1989 No Holds Barred movie, WCW also tried to extract elements of the Ready to Rumble film into their actual wrestling product. At least Diamond Dallas Page was DDP both in the movie and on WCW programming, as opposed to WWF’s version, in which I believe Lister started to think he actually WAS Zeus. I’m not sure if all that was ever explained, but let’s gets back to the point at hand.
In an effort to co-promote the movie and their core wrestling product simultaneously, WCW invited Arquette to join them on a few of their weekly broadcasts of Monday Nitro and Thunder, which in and of itself is a fine idea. And it was the last good idea seen in this particular storyline arc.
Although DDP played the evil heel in the movie, he was a face in current storylines, feuding with a pre-TNA Jeff Jarrett over the big gold belt. Arquette and Page had supposedly become friends while shooting the movie together, so the scrawny actor sided with DDP against Jarrett.
A mere two days after DDP defeated Jarrett to begin his third WCW world championship reign, Arquette wound up booked in a tag team match on Thunder, in which partner DDP and Arquette himself faced Jeff Jarrett and Eric Bischoff. The unusual stipulation was that whoever scored the pinfall in the match would become the world champion. Against his own wishes as a long-time wrestling fan, Arquette somehow pinned Bischoff, even as Page pinned Jarrett, and was crowned the new WCW world heavyweight champion. Arquette was a skinny, untrained, unconvincing champion, to be sure. The moment that title switch occurred, many die-hard WCW fans changed the channel permanently.
Much has been written over the years about how incredibly stupid this booking decision was, so I’ll spare you my two cents. Suffice it to say that Arquette never should have been made champion, and he knew that as well as anyone. As much of a slap in the face Arquette’s title reign was to the industry, I highly respect the decision Arquette made to donate all the salary he earned while working for WCW to the families of wrestlers who had recently passed away, including Owen Hart, Brian Pillman, and referee Brian Hildebrand. That was a classy move.
So now the issue was how to get the belt off a man who was incapable of wrestling a world-caliber match on national television. WCW came up with a fairly acceptable solution to that problem. Arquette would defend the title in a triple-threat match against his pal DDP and the hated Jeff Jarrett, in what most fans figured would look a lot more like Page versus Jarrett with Arquette staying out of the way, and possibly assisting if needed. That would have worked just fine, with DDP and Arquette celebrating in the middle of the ring, the vanquished former champ Jarrett flat on his back from a Diamond Cutter.
But of course, that’s not how it all went down. The triple-threat match was signed for Slamboree 2000 in the Kemper Arena in Kansas City. Unfortunately, that’s all WCW did properly.
First of all, WCW had the brilliant idea to re-introduce fans to the three-tier cage of doom from Ready to Rumble, which was NOT a work environment one might consider “safe”. In fact there was a moment where Page and Jarrett were both laid out on top of the cage, and you could see DDP’s gloved fist clutching the mesh, preventing his momentum from allowing him to roll off the cage for what would have surely been a devastating accidental fall.
At first the world champion seemed to recognize his role and stayed out of the way so DDP and Jarrett could get it on. And let me add, the two wrestlers worked hard and did their very best to entertain the paying crowd in that dangerous, awkward environment. None of the blame for this match belongs to Page Falkinburg or Jeff Jarrett, the performers. They each gave one Hell of an effort, but the gimmick, plus the third opponent, plus the silly booking (we’ll get to that in a moment) equaled one horrendous ppv main event.
At a crucial point in the action, with both Jarrett and Page dazed and bloodied, Arquette made his way up to the top of the entire structure, standing a few fee beneath the title belt. Had he wished to, he could have claimed the gold for a successful title defense then and there. But it soon became clear that Arquette was there to do the right thing. His plan was to keep Jarrett away from the belt to ensure DDP would reclaim what was rightfully his. That looked great on paper, but of course Vince Russo was on the payroll at that time, and you know what Vinny Ru loves more than anything, don’t you? A meaningless SWERVE, of course! Arquette blasted DDP with a guitar out of nowhere, and hugged Jarrett right before Jarrett claimed the belt and another world championship.
Oh, and somewhere in the middle of Jarrett celebrating with Arquette, Mike Awesome and Chris Kanyon wound up on top of the structure as well, and Kanyon took a dangerous bump from the cage to the floor. In the Kemper Arena, in Kansas City. About two weeks shy of the first anniversary of Owen Hart’s tragic fall to his death in the same arena. Classy touch, WCW.
The next night on Nitro, Arquette gave a lame promo discussing his actions: you can’t trust people from Hollywood. He then left WCW, never to be heard from again. That’s it? That’s all the logic we get, after having paid $30.00 for a show that ended with a screwball finish? Arquette suddenly sided with his buddy’s hated rival, and the fans got almost no answer at all to the question, “why, David, why?” No wonder WCW went out of business shortly thereafter.
Did they learn a lesson from all this and change their approach to promoting solid wrestling and logical storylines? Of course not. Vince Russo booked HIMSELF to win the world title a mere four months later. That’s the way to keep your most important centerpiece, your world heavyweight title, strong in the eyes of your fans Vince. Jackass.
For more pro wrestling fun, check out Eric Szulczewski’s The Triple-Threat Short Form, Scott Keith’s SummerSlam Countdown, and Matt Gardner’s The Gospel of Wrestling: According to Matthew.
How did the staff do predicting TNA’s Hard Justice ppv? Simply compare The Rasslin’ Roundtable to PK’s
Live Hard Justice Coverage to find out.
NEW FEATURE! As a Monday morning wrestling columnist, management and I have concluded that I’m in the ideal position to post results of our Rasslin’ Roundtable picks after each pay-per-view. Stay tuned to next week’s column, where I’ll be taking a look at the Summerslam roundtable picks and results!
We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.
p.s. – You know the term civil war? My question is, if it’s so damn civil, what’s all the shooting and stuff about?
